Word: hamer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...have you forsaken me?" And he'd stayed for Jesus' final hoarse shout a moment later. Then Judas had found his way to the house of another old pupil, one whom Jesus had been forced to send home when he caught him tampering with children for the second time--Hamer from Bethlehem...
...Hamer had taken up his old life as a plasterer, and he lived with his toothless mother and a wife who loathed Judas the moment she knew he came from the old days--Hamer's wild days with Jesus, not so long ago, maybe 16 months. Hamer shut her up fast, and she cooked them a decent meal. Afterward Hamer took Judas out to the edge of the village, a plateau aimed at the distant Dead Sea. He said to Judas, "You know Jesus told me, early on, that he was born here--it's David's town, remember? Said...
Still, as critics emphasize and Hamer himself acknowledges, genes alone do not control the chemistry of the brain. Ultimately, it is the environment that determines how these genes will express themselves. In another setting, for example, it is easy to imagine that Hamer might have become a high school dropout rather than a scientist. For while he grew up in an affluent household in Montclair, N.J., he was hardly a model child. "Today," he chuckles, "I probably would have been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder and put on Ritalin." In his senior year in high school, though, Hamer discovered organic...
Over the coming decade, Hamer predicts, scientists will identify thousands of genes that directly and indirectly influence behavior. A peek inside the locked freezer in the hallway outside his own lab reveals a rapidly expanding stash of plastic tubes that contain DNA samples from more than 1,760 volunteers. Among them: gay men and their heterosexual brothers, a random assortment of novelty seekers and novelty avoiders, shy children and now a growing collection of cigarette smokers...
Indeed, while Hamer has maintained a professional distance from his studies, it is impossible to believe he is not also driven by a desire for self-discovery. Soon, in fact, his lab will publish a paper about a gene that makes it harder or easier for people to stop smoking. Judging by the pack of cigarettes poking out of his shirt pocket, Hamer would seem to have drawn the wrong end of that genetic stick. He has tried to stop smoking and failed, he confesses, dozens of times. "If I quit," he says, "it will be an exercise of character...